By Michael Gold
A lot of people are complaining about inflation this election season, and rightfully so, but it also feels to me as if American values are also on the ballot, in a way that they never were before.
In terms of inflation, the price of gasoline and diesel fuel for trucking are high and that pinches everyone’s pocketbooks. Gas prices are more than $4.00 a gallon. Diesel is more than $6.00, on average, which increases trucking costs, and therefore supermarket prices. The price of my favorite brand of apples at our discount supermarket costs more than $1.00 per pound compared to one year ago.
The stock market is going wild, the tech sector is booming due to artificial intelligence, and the wealthy classes are doing quite well, thank you, but the consumer confidence index fell 6.7 points from 88.4 in August to 81.9 in September. (The index scales to 100.)
But beyond the obvious economic distress, I think there is something more deeply disturbing that is affecting the electorate. Or maybe it’s just me.
I recently attended a talk by Bret Stephens, the conservative New York Times columnist. He said, “The great virtue of American life is freedom, but there’s a certain kind of aimlessness in America.”
Unfortunately, I have to agree. I believe that the troubles of men are a big part of this picture. We’ve seen huge increases in online gambling, for instance. More than one quarter of the population of all adults in the country now have online gambling accounts. More than half of all men aged 18 to 49 have an online gambling account – 52 percent, according to a joint study published this past April by the Siena Research Institute and St. Bonaventure University’s School of Communication.
Prediction markets are a new form of gambling that is increasingly vexing. Almost forty percent of men aged 18 to 34 are engaged in playing the prediction markets, such as those set up by Kalshi or Polymarket. Three of four people on the Kalshi platform are men.
Cannabis use and abuse is at record high numbers.
In 2025, “Among all adults, daily, past 30-day and past 12-month cannabis use, and cannabis vaping remained at or near all-time highs. Adults in early midlife (35 to 50 years old) reported significantly higher rates of daily cannabis use than last year, increasing from 6.6% in 2024 to 8.5% in 2025,” concluded a University of Michigan study called Monitoring the Future.
While alcohol use has declined, the statistics on ingesting cannabis are disheartening. Men are leading the way here as well, which is nothing to be proud of.
“As of 2023, about 19 percent of men used marijuana in the past month. Earlier estimates were markedly lower, and with the exception of teenagers, use has risen across demographic groups. Adult men aged 26-34 are the most likely to use marijuana in the United States: more than 1 in 4 have used marijuana in the past month. One in 10 men use marijuana daily or near daily. The share of men using daily is roughly equal to the share of men who drink alcohol daily or near daily,” states the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM), a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization.
Coupled with these disturbing social problems, video game use has exploded. More than 212 million Americans play video games every week, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) proudly claims, up three percent over 2025. The population of the United States is about 342 million, according to the U.S. Census. So, we’re talking about two-thirds of the country playing games on screens, probably alone. Fifty three percent of all video game players are men.
All these negative trends come amidst the troubling facts of working life that men face today. They are having great difficulty finding jobs that pay well.
“As a result of structural changes in the economy–for example offshoring and automation–fewer men are working. Many of those who are working have seen a big decline in their wages…Men make up the majority of the workers in many industries most affected by automation,” AIBM’s website states. That would include manufacturing, transportation, and logistics.
AIBM details the deep trouble that many men are in today, saying, “men are less likely than women to graduate high school or earn a four-year college degree. And yet despite strong evidence that vocational training has been shown to boost earnings for men without bachelor’s degrees, investments in these programs are limited.”
We have too many men working at Target and Chipotle instead of working or training for jobs in technology, clean energy, defense and cybersecurity.
And we have a Federal government that should be spending far more money on creating educational and vocational opportunities for our youth, especially boys, but which has hamstrung its ability to invest in the future because it has incurred a monster debt of $40 trillion. The debt continues to grow with no end to the borrowing in sight, and no plan to address it.
I think a big part of men’s problems in general is that we have stopped thinking long-term. Too many Americans are looking for a quick fix, whether that’s out of desperation or a short attention span.
You’ve heard the term “the fish rots from the head down”?
Our national political class is filled with careerists who seem to care more about creating the perception that they’re doing something and advancing their own futures instead of actually trying to help the American people.
For example, we’ve seen far too many public shouting matches about transgender kids playing girls’ sports or going to the wrong bathroom. We’re talking about one percent of the country’s population. I’m not in favor of biological males playing on a girls’ team, ever, but Senators and Representatives thunder on about this issue any chance they can get. Is this really helping anybody?
Why can’t our political leaders use at least some of their energy building support for helping young men complete high school and learn a viable trade that provides decent pay? I guess talking about this and producing good legislation doesn’t help them get on cable TV. There’s way too much showbiz in politics now.
Speaking of showbiz, the current Secretary of Defense, a former TV personality, recently told the country about what our armed forces don’t need:
“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors,” Pete Hegseth said in late September. “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top,” he told the military at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.
Hegseth’s body contains so much testosterone that he’s currently losing the war with Iran and has pulled all our heavy B-1 bombers out of the United Kingdom because of an Iranian drone attack threat. This is all very manly.
Hegseth is also promoting the publicly televised execution of a man who in 2009 killed thirteen Americans who worked at Fort Hood in Texas, twelve of them soldiers. Another 32 people were shot or wounded in the attack. The shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, was a psychiatrist for the U.S. Army. You would think the guy should have been able to work out the problems in his head without going full Rambo.
What Hasan did is unforgivable and completely undeserving of any sympathy. But to livestream the man’s execution is appalling and barbaric. I’m not the first person to point out that this is what our enemies, such as the Islamic State do. I’d venture to say it’s also un-American. If Hegseth wants to kill someone on live television, why doesn’t he move to North Korea or Iran, where this kind of thing happens all the time?
Men who have lost their place in the American story are not going to be lifted up by Hegseth’s execution spectacle. It’s going to pull them farther down into the gutter.
Fortunately, there is a man in American life today who does aim to lift up people.
He did not specifically speak to the planned execution of Hasan, but the death penalty in general, calling it an attack on human dignity.
This man has discussed the importance of all human life.
“The moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect, and love those lives that are most fragile,” this man has said.
He has also talked about the importance of work: “Work must be a source of hope and life, allowing the expression of individual creativity and capacity for good….Human beings are called to be co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology. Our dignity lies in our ability to reflect, choose freely, love unconditionally and enter into authentic relationships with others…”
He’s a White Sox fan, so he knows loss and pain. But he also knows how to persevere, which is something we all need to do better.
His name is Robert Francis Prevost. Pope Leo.
He’s not on the ballot in November. But his values should be.
Michael Gold is a columnist for The Yonkers Times. His work has been published in The New York Daily News, The Albany Times-Union, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, The Hartford Courant and other newspapers.